Defragmented with diskeeper10=Bad Clusters? HELP PLEASE!

goaheadApr 5, 2006, 11:25 PM

hello

Ok, here it is.. (hopefully you read this "long story" and not get borred with it..)I just read some reviews today about good defragmentation utilz, and I have downloaded diskeeper 10 and defragmented my drive C (Wester Digital, RAPTOR @ 10.000RPM) and after defragmentation was finished, my system was very unstable. I first tought that, this is my RAM, (needet to reset) and wanted to restart my system to "clean" my RAM. After the reboot, when windows loaded, I oppened Windows Explorer, and I had part of many errors on my screen, like "Windows Explorer caused an error and needs to close.." and many more errors.I got scared, and uninstalled this software (diskeeper 10) and prompted to do a CHKDSK (fix errors checked) and after I restarted to start the checking..it was done..I just couldn't believe what I saw. 8O I had many bad clusters, and CHKDSK recovered many of my files in my C drive. This checking took at least 40 minutes ( it never tooked that long before! Max 5 minutes for checking drive C!) Ok, and after this check has finished, windows went crazy. Many errors came up, many of my startup software didn't even started, it just came up with errors. Even my desktop image has changed - my jpeg background image now has 3 dots on the screen! The original jpeg image does NOT have those dots (I just checked to make sure)What can this be ?

I need some advice, please! Is there any chance, that diskeeper 10 could cause all this ? If YES, is there any chance to "save" my hard-drive? *NOTE: This only happend today, after I installed diskeeper 10, and when I was running the defragmentation tool for drive C), or is my drive's time to leave me? :x My drive is 2 years old..so I don't know..I was thinking..could this be a "error-reporting" of MS's CHKDSK, or are we really talking about bad clusters? COuld a format of this drive "fix" this problem? Can a software (in general) cause bad clusters? Cause, otherwise, I cannot explain this..and I am really messed up.

I would appreciate if I could get some help, how to fix this.btw, my system specs (if this helps..): Intel P4 640, Asus p5wd2 MB, 2x512 Geil DDRII (533 Mhz) 1x Western Digital Raptor (with 3 partitions on it, and 1 of them is the C drive), 2x200GB Western Digital ata drives, Asus 6600GT GPU, Audigy 1 Audio, Enermax Noisetaker 485W PSU, 1x CD-RW drive, 1x DVD-drive. (NOTE: my system is NOT, and was never overclocked before.) If there's anything I missed, please let me know.

It sounds like to me that diskeeper royally fuc*ked up the defragmentation. But not to worry, bad clusters aren't a problem with the hard drive, they're a problem with the OS. Bad SECTORS are what you should worry about.

And yes, formatting your drive would fix the bad cluster problems. In fact, at this point, I would backup as much as you can and do a clean install of WinXP.

And never use Diskeeper again. WinXP's disk management tools are fine and often do the best job.

After wasting 7hrs of headaches with my system, I did a clean install of Win XP and now I'll do a chkdsk after I finish installing all my software. I hope it'll not find any "bad sectors". (I just pray for it). I will post it after the scan.

I have one more question - I downloaded "WD Diagnostics" from the WDC website, and started the software - started it, and it shows on the "SMART Status"= FAILED. What can this be ? In my Bios it is enabled. Why does this show as FAILED ? Is there a problem ? How can I check if there's a problem ?

Anyway - I think I'll loose my hope if the CHKDSK will find any errors, even with the HDD formated and fresh installed OS..I do not know what else I will do.

Yesterday, my PC failed to boot into Windows due to several corrupted system files. I replaced these files using the recovery console and once I was in Windows, I check the Event log. There were many instances of the following errors:

Event ID: 7The device, DeviceHarddisk0D, has a bad block.

Event ID: 7The device, DeviceHarddisk1D, has a bad block.

I ran chkdsk and it recovered a lot of orphaned files, but before it could finish, I got a BSOD which pointed to nvata.sys. It then rebooted the system and was given a warning by SMART that my c: drive status was bad.

So I thought it was a disk failure.However, I check my Fujitsu laptop, on which I had also installed Diskeeper. The event log there also showed a disk related error:

Event ID: 11The device, DeviceHarddisk1D, has a controller error.

Slightly different error, but checking out NVIDIA forums, these type of errors are all related to the SATA hard disk issues with nForce4 chipsets. However, my Fujitsu laptop is a Pentium-M system and the HDD is a standard IDE interface.

The only common component between these two PCs was Diskeeper 10. Now upon checking the event log for the dates these issues start occuring, both PCs started logging disk problems AFTER I had run the I-FAAST defragmentation. Although not conclusive, I find Diskeeper to be highly suspect.

You've probably fixed your problem by now, but I reckon if I reformat the hard disk and reinstall windows, SMART should stop detecting the drive as BAD or FAILED.

But one thing's for sure - I'm never going to let Diskeeper come near any of my PCs!

Personally never had a problem with Diskeeper... IIRC XP's defragmentation is good because it has been licnesed form Diskeeper... remember Win 95/98 defrag was terrible, it only got decent once they agreed to pay someone else to do it.

smart status = failed? buy another drive as soon as possible and backup

i dont think the program screwed your drive. the drive was probably damaged and when defragmenting, it moved data to the damaged part of your drive. I dont know if it moves system files, but it seems so. That's when your problems start: moving system files to a bad block area screwed windows.

Quote:

SMART should stop detecting the drive as BAD or FAILED.

hmmmmmmm i dont know if a reformat would solve a bad smart status... smart is a physical diagnostic tool, and format is logical. but it's worth a try

I use disk keeper on all my home computer and have never had a problem.. for the record the windows defragmenter is disk keeper light.

I think that by not defragging you caused excess stress on your drive. The more fragments you have the more RPM it takes to read/ write a file. I would download the Western digital HD trouble shooter program (I am assuming they have one) and run that. After your drive is fixed reinstall disk keeper and set it to defrag on screensaver mode so your HD never gets fragmented.

I wiped clean the HD and reinstalled Windows, but SMART still says BAD status. Having run WD diagnostics on the drive, it does seem to be a hardware failure and it was just a coincidence that I started using Diskeeper at the time. (Though having Diskeeper move files all over the drive may have highlighted problems with the hardware which would've have shown up in the near future anyway.)

Still, I'm inclined to give PerfectDisk 7 a go. I thought the Smart Scheduling feature will be great, but it kept starting defragmentation while I was gaming and caused major slowdowns. I read PerfectDisk is geared towards manual defragmention.

I'm hoping someone can alleviate my fears, because having using Diskeeper10 a month or so ago, my system has been shafted big time.

As in my previous posts, I mentioned my WD 74GB Raptor was buggered and I've had that replaced with a new one. I ran the WD diagnostic tools on it and it is working 100%.

However, now my storage drive (WD SATA 320GB) has started corrupting data and I started getting CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check?). Also the System Event Log is reporting multiple bad block errors (Error ID: 7).I started to worry and I backed up all the data to DVDs.

Having read that a zerofill format can reallocate bad sectors, I used the WD tools to perform a zerofill format. Just before this finished, I got a BSOD and upon rebooting, SMART reported my hard disk as FAIL and windows no longer recognizes my storage HD.

Both my hard disks started showing sign of failure after I used Diskeeper10 to defragment my files using I-FAAST and also resize my MFT allocation. It may be just a coincidence, but I also find the chances of having both HDs fail on me within a month also slim.

Is it possible for software to cause physical hard disk failures or am I just very unlucky? I'm hoping it's the latter, otherwise I'll forever be in fear of software killing off my hard disks. Luckily, I bought my systen from a very good vendor, so they are sending a replacement drive to me tomorrow.

theoretically, it can damage your disk, that's why it's not recommended to defragment our disk too often. But that's in a long term, not the first time you run the program... it's a too much weird coincidence that 2 times you run the program you get a bad disk... that's 100% in a 50% probability... i dont think you would be so bad luckily.

if i were you, i would stop using this program, and would report your 2 bad hd's to them.

theoretically, it can damage your disk, that's why it's not recommended to defragment our disk too often. But that's in a long term, not the first time you run the program... it's a too much weird coincidence that 2 times you run the program you get a bad disk... that's 100% in a 50% probability... i dont think you would be so bad luckily.

if i were you, i would stop using this program, and would report your 2 bad hd's to them.

I agree with you 100% on not using Diskeeper. I tried out Raxo's PerfectDisk 7 and after two weeks, no errors at all. (Diskeeper "caused" errors the next day).I've just bought Raxco's retail version.

This is a perplexing issue though. On the one hand, both of my drives started showing hard disk errors just after I ran Diskeeper's I-FAAST defragmentation. But if it's so easy for Diskeeper to junk hard disks, then the internet should be awash with AVOID Diskeeper posts.

But on the otherhand, I find it hard to believe two hard disks can fail so soon after purchase. Since these drives were bought as part of a system, perhaps the fault is being caused by whatever system the system builder uses to setup the PC. (The replacement HD was a freshly sealed drive which I installed myself - after 2 weeks, no problems whatsoever *touch wood*)

Another odd coincidence to throw into the equation. I used the diskeeper demo on my laptop as well. My laptop is slightly old and its hardware is nothing like my new desktop hardware. I used Diskeeper's I-FAAST on my second partition (D), BUT NOT on C (Diskeeper reported the performance benefits are not enough to bother with I-FAAST).

The day after I ran I-FAAST, a disk error appeared in my System Log pointing to my 2nd partition (D), but not my 1st partition (C). Over the years I've been using this laptop, I have NEVER seen a System Log error related to the hard disk. I got rid of Diskeeper from my laptop and I haven't seen a disk related System Error since.

So with this new evidence, I can't see how I can rule out Diskeeper as the culprit. Since it's IP, I can't find out how I-FAAST works, but it may be monitoring/tinkering with the disk controller driver to work out the optimum file placement, but at the same time affecting its performance.

Anyway, nothing is conclusive, but it's still an intriguing mystery. Perhaps in the future, more poeple will start putting two and two together and decide Diskeeper is causing their HD problems...

P.S. I don't think I'll bother informing Diskeeper about what happened with my drives. I think the most likely response is "it's a hardware failure, nothing to do with us". Unfortunately, they don't offer a forum, but even if they did, I'm pretty sure a post like mine will be deleted post haste. If a rumour like this ever went mainstream, it'll totally kill off their product.

Before you do anything else with the system/drive, track down an use a more descriptive SMART tool to see what exactly is going on. Search online, there are free ones, and usually find there way into tool collection CD's which you should have anyway. Also, as others have stated, SMART failures indicated hardware failure and thus reformatting won't solve the problem. Since it is a raptor and thus subject to a 5 year warranty, backup whatever data is valuable on it (now while you still can), wipe it if you have sensitive data on it (again, frree tools usually on cd's like the Ultimate Boot CD, for example), and call up WD to send it in.

The Raptor has already been replaced and my storage drive replacement will be sent to me tomorrow.

I used WD's diagnostic tool and it stated the SMART failure was due to too many sector reallocation. Although the drive had been acting up for a few days, the SMART failure only occured when I tried the zero-fill format using WD diagnostic tools.

Still, I'm still not sure if this is just an unlucky failure of two disks in a row or somet hardware/software is responsible.

Don't be such a worry-wart about your WD Raptor ... WD Warrants them for FIVE years! If your HD is dorked just contact WD, get an RMA and they'll fix it

True. My mother often tells me I worry too much. :wink: But then again, I've had my new pre-built system for less than 2 months. If these new replacement drives get borked again within a few weeks, then I'm going to demand the system builder to check out my system and maybe replace the mobo with an ATI chipset. (Been looking at the nvidia forums a lot and many seem to be having issues with NF4 and SATA disks).

Don't ever stop backing up your data, soon as you stop, it will come back and bite you.

As for Spinrite, yes it's expensive. But it's cheaper than using a data recovery service. I've started using it on a regular basis. It has revived some drives I had marked as bad. And built from parts of several drives. There is no trail version, because it works as stated. If you used a trial version and it fix your problem, why would you buy when you were finished. You no longer need it because it fixed the problem.

Glad you found your problem. But I would question the MB if you loose another. SATA cables, not muck to go wrong there.

Ok if your system is unstable then anything it processes can get corrupted. So if your system isn't stable and you run any degramenter than you are going to randomly corrupt bits of your hard drive.

I recommend less guessing and more testing.

1) Memtest86 to see if your ram is 100%2) Prime95 to see if you system is generally stable3) WD Dos utility to test the drive for problems.

If your system tests fine, but you hard drive does not, call WD and request and advanced replacement RMA. They send you a working drive, you tranfer what files you can to it, then you send the defective drive back in the box the first one came in and pay $5 to ship it.

PS sometimes letting the manufacturers utility "zero" the drive helps, the downside is it erases the drive.

To add a little bit more onto this, a fine multi-faceted burn-in tester is Lucifer, it stresses disks, memory, processor, and indirectly things like power and motherboard. If something fails, it usually is pretty good about pointing you in the right direction (i.e. the last test on the screen). This tool plus the others mentioned by Codesmith are all packaged in the ultimate boot cd.

Nothing short of a very bad PSU should be able to cause any real physical damage.

However an unastable system can cause working parts to fail diagnostic tests. It can also corrupt the data on the drive creating further symptoms of a failing hard drive.

So 1 make sure your system passes memtest 86, prime 95 and that Lucifer program a try. These test don't take much of your personal time, just 5 min to get them started, but they do take your PC out of action for hours at a time.

Most people like to start one test when they go to sleep, another before they go to work ....

Once you have a stable system then you can run the hard drive diagnostics and trust the results

If the drive fails you can try zeroing the drive and retesting. If it still fails then request and Advance Replacement RMA from WD.

Also if you have another system that you can test the Raptor in while you are stability testing your main PC then by all means do so.